Adoption of Rainwater Management Strategies by Farmers in the Highlands of Ethiopia

Summary
This report is based on semi-structured interviews with 37 households in the Ethiopian Highlands, conducted for the International Water Management Institutes work with the Nile Basin Development Challenge. The report explores the adoption and non-adoption of eight rainwater management strategies in three field sites, offering explanations of which strategies are considered most feasible, based on considerations of formal institutions, social structures, and land tenure.

I. Introduction
This report is part of the International Water Management Institute's (IWMI) involvement with the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC), a program that improves the resilience of rural livelihoods in the Ethiopian Highlands through a landscape approach to rainwater management. Over 85% of the population of Ethiopia lives in the Highlands, with the vast majority relying on rainfed, mixed-system agriculture that uses few inputs and suffers from high levels of nutrient depletion and soil erosion. These factors result in low productivity and severe food insecurity. Technology adoption is often seen as a way to help improve production, but the social settings in which technologies exist are too often overlooked. This research intends to shed light on three contexts in which technology adoption is, or, more often, is not, occurring. IWMI has identified eight rainwater management strategies on which to focus their efforts: multipurpose trees, orchards, terraces/bunds, river diversion, ponds, handdug wells, area enclosure, and gully rehabilitation. The term strategies is used here instead of technologies because it has fewer connotations of coming from outside of the community. These eight strategies do, however, fall into the category of technologies in the sense that the literature uses this term. The paper will first present the eight strategies and outline specific factors that influence their adoption, including perceptions of how these strategies impact livelihoods. The next section addresses how formal institutions, social structures, and land tenure affect adoption and non-adoption of technologies more generally. The paper then discusses several aspects of interventions that are most important to the NBDC project.

II. Methodology
This study interviewed 37 households in three areas of the Ethiopian Highlands, Jeldu and Diga in Oromia Region, and Fogera in Amhara Region. The sampling was taken from data from a household survey that was previously carried out by IWMI. The household survey captured a quantitative picture of life in three field sites, whereas this research uses qualitative techniques to explain why we see some of the dynamics that arose in the quantitative picture. The sample was stratified by gender, land size, number of technologies adopted, and participation in sharecropping arrangements. The study interviewed 18 male-headed households and 19 female-headed households. Femaleheaded households are over-sampled and are not representative of the population as a whole. This was done because gender is a priority factor within the NBDC. 11

households sharecrop in land, and 15 were landowners who sharecrop out land. Seven additional households have an arrangement for having other people farm their land, but the agreement does not exhibit the traditional 50/50 split of agricultural products. Land holdings range from hectare to 8 hectares, with an additional three farmers holding no land of their own. The average land size in the sample was approximately 2.3 hectares. The research questions focused on the areas of policy, technologies, and institutions, which are the priorities of the subdivision of the NBDC in which this research falls. They focused on the specific strategies that have been identified as priorities for IWMI, on land arrangements, labor arrangements, and gender. The research attempted to use a pile-sorting component to rank the strategies in terms of risk, likeliness of adoption, impact on livelihood, and suitability; however, the pile sorting was not as successful as hoped because of issues with the specific pictures chosen and translation inconsistencies. Translation was another problematic aspect of the research. In each field site translators were used to interpret either Amharic or Afaan Oromifa into English during the interviews. Field teams were different in each site and thus the way that questions were asked was not consistent across all sites. The English levels of each translator varied, and they had no prior qualitative training.

III. Results Rainwater Management Strategies

The NBDC has selected eight rainwater management strategies that are priorities for the project. Adoption of these strategies is generally fairly low, and the definition of each strategy varies between farmers, extension agents, and NGOs. The chart below summarizes the extent of adoption of each strategy, each of which is explored in detail below. On average, each household has adopted only 1.7 of a possible seven strategies. By field site, the averages are 1.1 in Jeldu, 1.5 in Diga, and 2.9 in Fogera. Because this data is based on only 37 households that were not evenly distributed between sites by gender, hopefully the household survey will be able to elucidate the reasons for the discrepancies between each site. Strategy Multipurpose Trees Orchards River Diversion Gully Rehabilitation Hand-dug wells Ponds Number of Households Adopting 18 12 10 8 7 2 Percentage of Households Adopting 51% 34% 29% 23% 20% 6%

Area Enclosure Terraces

2 **

6% **

**Adoption of terraces is forced and does not exhibit the same patterns of adoption as the other strategies see below.

Multipurpose Trees
The farmers outline a historical trajectory that has led them to need multipurpose trees. During the Derg regime, the forests were legally protected and population stress was low, and there was adequate wood for everyone. After the Derg fell, the people cut down the trees to use for fuel. Now, people have no access to forests, and so there is a huge need for multipurpose trees to be planted on private land. Multipurpose trees are trees that are deliberately planted and managed for more than one output. These outputs can include animal fodder, fuel, timber for house construction and fencing borders of land, medicine, food, compost material, shade, or controlling soil erosion. IWMI has a specific list of multipurpose trees that it included in the household study mentioned earlier. These are Sesbania Sesban, Tree Lucerne, pigeon pea, elephant grass, vetiver, desho grass, cowpea, and wild oats. However, farmers routinely mentioned a variety of other trees that they considered to be multipurpose, including eucalyptus and many indigenous trees. Sesbania is by far the most commonly adopted variety of multipurpose tree across the three sites. Most farmers perceive another output of these multipurpose trees, which is preventing climate change. There has been a very clear connection made between planting trees and preventing climate change, which results in more even rainfall patterns and fewer episodes of drought or flooding. It is unclear the sources from which this information is coming, though it as at least coming from local government officials and the school systems, both discussed below. This is probably the result of the so-called Green Economy Strategy, which is a national policy of sustainable development that features, among many other things, carbon credits for mitigating the effects of climate change. One of the primary reasons for non-adoption of multipurpose trees is not knowing where to procure seedlings or seeds. Farmers frequently stated that they did not know where to go for seeds or seedlings, or that they simply did not exist in their community, when their neighbors said that they were available at the market, at seedling stations run by the local government, or from neighbors who distribute the seeds for free. Another reason for non-adoption is that, for people who live far from the market or seedling station, seedlings are difficult to transport because they are waterlogged. Hiring a vehicle is cost-prohibitive, and the farmers do not think that donkeys would be suitable for transporting seedlings. Thus, with both multipurpose trees and orchards, the distribution of seedlings, free of charge and as close to the farmers homes as possible, makes farmers much more likely to adopt. Seedlings are preferable to seeds because the farmers perceive that producing a seedling requires some form of irrigation, which many do not have access to. They also said that the mandatory terrace building discussed below takes up all the time that they would have to produce seedlings from seeds. There do not seem to be issues of

neglect arising from failing to charge a fee for the seedlings. Selling the products of multipurpose trees to earn extra income was not a common practice in the three field sites. Occasionally multipurpose trees generate income when farmers use them to fatten animals that are intended for sale. There is no clear estimate as to how much income this produces, since the type and source of the animal vary widely. Rather than as a source of income, people primarily conceive of these trees as a source of timber for household fuel and for construction, as a source of fodder for their animals during the dry season, and as a means to prevent soil erosion. Women also spoke of them as a type of decoration for their compounds, and some farmers use them to protect their cropland from heavy winds. There is also a multipurpose tree called Kobo in Oromifa that is used to make candles and produces cooking oil. Most farmers do not perceive this practice as risky. Trees can generally be planted so that they do not take up space used for food crops, either on the borders of farmland or near the house. There are two situations in which the trees are, however, likely to fail: in the Diga field site, termites destroyed many of these trees, and in some cases, the trees must be protected from cattle for a period of time because they pull the roots out of the ground when feeding. When multipurpose trees do fail, farmers do not perceive this as having a significant impact on their livelihoods. Multipurpose trees are used in combination with terraces, a new practice that appears to have started this year. Seedlings are planted in the terraces to provide them with extra stability. The farmers report extremely mixed results as to whether these are effective, but they have only been used in this way within the last four months.

Orchards
Orchards could be considered multipurpose trees since they often have outputs other than fruit. IWMI was primarily concerned with mango, apple, orange, guava, and papaya trees, though farmers frequently interpreted fruit trees to include bananas, avocados, lemons, coffee, and sugarcane. The primary reason for non-adoption of orchards is that people believe that their land is too high in altitude and therefore not suitable for growing fruit trees. Thus, fruit trees, especially mangos, are only significantly prevalent in the lowland areas. One model farmer in Jeldu was aware that apple trees are suited for higher elevations, but he did not know where to procure seeds or seedlings and had not adopted. There is, furthermore, a conception amongst a few farmers that the soil has to be very fertile to produce fruit trees. One farmer said that he would need to adopt some of the other strategies discussed before he could adopt mango trees. A final reason for non-adoption is that people perceive that their fruit will be stolen if it is far from the house and not monitored. The impact that orchards have on livelihoods is varied. Farmers estimate that a single mango tree, without fertilizer or irrigation, produces between 50 and 500 birr per year. With fertilizer, farmers estimate that they could more than triple their output. For example, one farmer produces 150 birr per mango tree but could make 500 birr per year with fertilizer. Each tree would require about 2 kg each of fertilizer, which in total would cost between 16 and 18 birr. Thus, it would seem fairly obvious for farmers to take loans to purchase fertilizer. There are a variety of reasons why farmers do not do this, discussed in the following sections. There are no significant risks associated with orchards. Seeds are estimated to

cost about 75 birr per kilo, and seedlings about 10 birr each from markets, which farmers do not think is prohibitive. On occasion, some farmers will plant seeds that come from fruits that they bought for consumption as a type of experiment to see if they will grow. Farmers estimate that seedlings generally take about seven years to produce fruit, and that mangos produce a high yield only every other year, but no one saw these as an obstacle to adoption on land that they owned themselves. Only two farmers that we talked to said that their orchards had failed. The first was in a lowland part of Jeldu, where she said that drought one year had dried up the orange and banana seeds that she had received from her neighbor. This is further evidence of the need to supply seedlings rather than seeds, especially in areas prone to drought. The second was a failure of about 150 out of 200 coffee seedlings, a result of not having enough shade.

Terraces and Bunds

2012 marked the first year of a five-year national terrace-building campaign intended to prevent soil erosion. In each of the three field sites, people were required to contribute between 30 and 60 days of labor to building terraces or stone bunds, both on common land and on privately held land. The fine for not appearing ranges from 10-50 birr per day, depending on the kebele. Generally each household is required to contribute one member each day, but exceptions are sometimes made for the elderly or sick, with a medical certificate. Having the government organize this campaign overcomes the crucial collective action problem that arises from terrace building: if terraces were only built on individual plots, this would increase run-off into neighboring plots. Communal construction also overcomes the inability of labor-scarce households to terrace their land. However, there are complications that also arise from having the government organize the implementation. Terrace building takes place in-between harvesting and plowing seasons. This is a period when farmers do all the other work that cannot be done during the rest of the year; so, many farmers resent having to contribute their labor because it takes them away from projects on the farm. This compulsory labor was often cited as a reason for not being able to adopt some of the other six strategies. Farmers have a collective memory of terrace building under the Derg regime, which paid the farmers rather than using compulsory labor. After the Derg fell, many farmers destroyed the terraces because they were no longer required to have them. There is an extremely mixed conception among the farmers of how well terraces and stone bunds control soil erosion even though almost all perceive soil erosion as a major obstacle to production, and most acknowledge that they increase yields. As mentioned before, many kebeles are just now starting to plant trees and grasses in the terraces to give them stability, which may increase their effectiveness. However, the people who said that the terraces were effective may have been hesitant to criticize technologies so heavily associated by the government. Particularly in the Jeldu site, farmers used other methods to control soil erosion that they believe work better than terraces. Most of these methods involve building some sort of drainage ditch to divert water around croplands. Farmers also sometimes adapt the terraces to better suit their land, building stone bunds in-between each terrace level. Most

people whose land is flat say that they do not need terraces on this land because soil erosion is not a problem. Some farmers, particularly older women who have not attended trainings on terraces, resist using terraces because they take up space that could be used for food production. In one interview, a woman said that her husbands brother had decided against her will that the kebele would construct terraces on her land. She did not see these as necessary or beneficial and resented them for taking up space for barley production. In most kebeles, farmers are instructed to construct terraces on their own private land after they contributed their mandatory communal labor. This direction was rarely followed since it was plowing time and farmers did not want to delay plowing to construct terraces, especially since their land will eventually be terraced with communal labor. Because the implementation is so recent, farmers are also be waiting to see how this particular kind of terrace fares on other farmers land.

River Diversion
River diversion is a strategy by which farmers construct a canal-like structure from the river to their fields to use for irrigation. The techniques of the actual construction vary greatly from farm to farm, as does the frequency of construction, which ranges from once a month to once a year. More infrequently, farmers will use mechanical pumps to direct water from the river to their crops. When asked about this technology, many farmers instead talked about using land that is adjacent to the river. This land can produce a crop in the dry season because it is wet. This is the most common way that people use the river, rather than diverting it. River diversion is by far the most lucrative of all the eight rainwater management strategies. Farmers use it to grow high-value vegetables such as potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, chickpeas, onions, and peppers, as well as sugar cane and maize. They estimate that they earn between 1,000 and 2,000 birr per year as a result. Many farmers, especially in Diga, said that this was a technology that was brought from migrants from the east, who came here because of drought in their homelands. The most obvious obstacle to adopting river diversion is the distance from the river. The majority of farmers who were interviewed said that they simply lived too far from the river to divert the water. It seems that farmers also perceive that the river must be fairly large in order to divert it, since many farmers who lived next to smaller streams said that there was no river near their land. Lastly, many farmers reported that the rainfall was adequate, and so they did not need to use irrigation. In Gora Lelisa, a kebele in the lowlands of Jeldu, river diversion is a very common practice. This strategy has been practiced in this area for many generations, and people self-organize to provide the labor for diversion. It is common for a group of landowners, and sometimes even their sharecroppers, to come together to collectively divert the river. Interestingly, in Diga, a dam was constructed to provide water the town of Nekemete. The dam eliminated some farmers ability to irrigate their land using river diversion. The farmers were compensated for this based on the value of onion production, but they do not feel that the compensation matches how much money they are losing by not using irrigation.

Ponds
The types of ponds discussed in this research are those that are constructed to harvest rainwater. The base of such ponds can be lined with concrete, clay, plastic, or geo-membrane and are generally used for the same purposes as river diversion, but also for household water consumption. Ponds are a fairly rare occurrence in the three field sites. For farmers who have not been trained on ponds, they are aware of the concept and say that it has been used in their communities in the past. However, they frequently believe that the soil is too sandy to hold water and are not aware of methods to prevent this problem. After having received training, the primary reason for non-adoption is that they are labor and capital intensive. When they exist, multiple families usually share the labor, cost, and product. Farmers estimate that the plastic or concrete they would need costs 13 birr per meter, if it is even available, which it frequently is not. One farmer estimated the total cost for an 800-liter pond would be 2,400 birr. The terrace construction this year was cited as a reason why they could not build ponds. One pond that was built in Fogera took 15 men one month to construct. A secondary reason for non-adoption is that people are concerned that animals and people will fall into the pond. This has happened in two instances. In the first, the animal clawed the plastic and it ripped, resulting in the water draining into the soil. In the second, animals fell in and drowned, contaminating the water and rendering it not suitable for drinking. Additionally, farmers perceive that ponds may attract malaria. And lastly, people who live close to rivers, streams, or natural ponds do not think that this strategy would be useful for them since they already have a water supply. In some cases for all three strategies involving irrigation, farmers perceive that they need a pump or a motor to use these technologies. These pumps are generally costprohibitive, even when they are shared amongst several households. One farmer rents a motorized pump for 50 birr per hour, and most of the income she generates from irrigating tomatoes and onions is consumed by renting the pump. In another case, a farmer was promised by the woreda a pedal-pump for 300 birr, but the price has now increased to 1,000 birr.

Hand-Dug Wells
Farmers are more familiar with hand-dug wells than with ponds, and they provide many of the same outputs. To a greater extent, however, wells are used for household water consumption and not for irrigation. Wells provide drinking water for people and livestock and water for washing clothes, and only occasionally do they use well water to irrigate vegetables. Wells, like ponds, are usually shared with multiple households, and families sometimes allow their relatives to use their well even if they did not contribute to its construction. Farmers are generally very knowledgeable about how far down the groundwater is on their land and how far they are capable of digging. Anywhere from 12 to 40 meters is thought to be too far for a person to dig without machinery. Thus, non-adoption is not a matter of a lack of information, but that wells, like ponds, are also labor and capital intensive. Most farmers hire outside trained labor to dig wells because this activity is

perceived to be dangerous. Hiring someone to build a well is estimated to cost between 800 and 2,000 birr. Doing this takes about two weeks to one month for one person. And again similarly to ponds, there is a conception that people (especially those that consume alcohol) and livestock will fall in the well and drown. Another obstacle is that one must have stones to construct the top of the well, and in most cases the well must be fenced to keep animals out. In a sense, wells, river diversion, and ponds work against each other because people perceive that they only need one source of irrigation, and this is only if rainfall is not perceived to be adequate. In the Fogera region, the Finnish government has previously built many wells, so people are much less likely to adopt them on their own land. People pay 3 birr a year to use these wells as much as they want. Only people who live very near these wells use them to irrigate vegetables.

Area Enclosure
Area enclosure is the by far least well known of the strategies ostensibly because it is the least promoted by extension agents. This strategy involves fencing a piece of land so that livestock and people cannot interfere, allowing the land to regenerate and the fertility to increase. The vast majority of farmers had never heard of this strategy before. They furthermore did not see the value in adopting this strategy after the concept was explained because they could simply tell their neighbors not to allow livestock on a piece of land. If the neighbors did not obey, the officials would warn them. The most common explanation was that land is too short-supplied to not be plowed. Fallowing is a common practice, but fallowed land is usually used for grazing. Farmers would often interpret this technology as fencing around cultivated croplands to keep livestock out, which is often done on smaller high-value plots, such as coffee and sugarcane, or on plots near roads where cattle frequently travel. The farmers do not think this is possible to do with all of their cropland because it would require too much timber and labor. When area enclosure is adopted, farmers will sometimes plant special grasses or trees, including elephant grass, inside the area in order to regenerate the land and to provide animal fodder. This fodder can then be used for animal fattening to earn a profit or for household consumption. The two farmers who had adopted this practice were both unmarried women, one widow and one divorcee, who had teenaged sons who helped with farm labor. The data suggests that female-headed households who have children living in the home that are old enough to assist with labor tend to adopt more of the technologies that they are trained on. These women are generally between the ages of 30 and 60 and their children between the ages of 12 and 18. One other farmer described area enclosure practice by his neighbor, who now rotates hybrid livestock on 2 hectares of land that he had enclosed for 6 months, planting a special type of grass inside. This suggests that a large amount of land and an investment in livestock is necessary to make this a suitable technology.

Gully Rehabilitation

A gully is a ditch or small valley that was created by running water. Gullies are evidence of extreme land degradation, which farmers resolve in a variety of ways, including filling the gully with soil, branches or leaves, planting eucalyptus or other types of trees in the gully, or hammering poles into the ground next to the gully and surrounding it with stones. The benefits derived from rehabilitating gullies are that the land will eventually become cultivable, and farmers can harvest firewood and timber from the trees planted in the gullies in the meantime. Farmers often believe that building terraces, otherwise controlling soil erosion, and enclosing an area will at least prevent, and in some cases repair gullies. In some kebeles, mostly in the Fogera site and to a lesser extent in Jeldu and Diga, gully rehabilitation was a forced communal activity, like terrace building. Thus many farmers stated that they had rehabilitated gullies on other peoples land but not on their own. The gullies that are selected for communal rehabilitation are usually very severe and large; smaller gullies are left to the landowners to repair. The fact that it is a forced activity may explain why almost all farmers are aware of this technology only two stated that they did not know it. Alternatively, a version of this technology may have been prevalent in these communities for years more research is needed to determine which of these is true. The obvious reason for not adopting this technology is that people do not think that they have gullies on their land. This is especially true if there is not a significant flow of water on their land. Generally, gullies have to be substantial in size for farmers to perceive that there is a problem, a phenomenon also described by Gessesse et al. Some farmers also said that labor was a prohibitive factor, with estimates ranging from six hours to two weeks to rehabilitate a gully, depending on the size. If labor is in short supply but cash is not, households will sometimes hire someone to repair gullies. Alternatively, many social networks, particularly debo, or labor exchange, will often pool their labor to rehabilitate gullies on a members land. One farmer spoke of a link between gully rehabilitation and the cost of fertilizer. He said that if the cost of fertilizer were more affordable, people would be more likely to rehabilitate gullies on their land because it would be suitable to be fertilized. This could

suggest that farmers perceive that land that was formerly a gully requires an additional input after being rehabilitated in order to be cultivated.

Institutions
Extension Agents
By far the determinant factor for technology adoption is whether farmers receive training from extension agents, or development agents (DAs), as they are known in Ethiopia. This is not to say that trainings always result in adoption; in fact, the opposite is often true, but it is important to know when trainings result in adoption and when they do not. Each kebele is assigned three development agents who are supposed to be the link between national-level agricultural policies and local farming practices. DAs receive extensive training and are well educated. Unfortunately, they are usually not well paid and often have chosen this career path because of a lack of alternatives. Thus they are often not very motivated. Motivation levels vary widely from kebele to kebele. Often there will be DAs who do the absolute best job they can, visiting farms that are far away and reaching everyone in the community. However, the more common situation is that DAs are burned-out, live in town, only interact with a few rich farmers, and participate in various forms of corruption. In many kebeles farmer-to-farmer training programs supposedly justify only talking to a few farmers. Model farmers are selected by DAs on the basis of how innovative they are. These model farmers are then supposed to train their neighbors. Training is supposed to happen in informal settings like coffee ceremonies and even at funerals, and at more formal settings like kebele meetings and smaller village-level meetings. Often visits to model farms are arranged by DAs. However, in all of the interviews, the only people who had ever claimed to participate in farmer-to-farmer training were the model farmers themselves. Most farmers said that farmer-to-farmer training did not exist in their kebele even though the model farmers reported that it did. A few were aware that it was supposed to be happening, but said that they had never received any training. DA trainings come in a variety of forms other than farmer-to-farmer training. Often trainings are conducted at kebele meetings, but exactly who attends such meetings varies greatly. In some cases people come on their own free will, in other cases kebele chairmen call people to meetings, meaning their presence is required. They also apparently hold trainings at church after services, but never at mosques. In one kebele, there was a 5-day training program held in which men and women attended at different times so that one spouse could be at home looking after the cattle and home. This was a rather well-functioning kebele; most others seriously neglect women, with one kebele administrator informing us that he didnt know the names of the female heads-ofhouseholds and could not help us locate them, but knew all the men. There is a large degree of mistrust directed at DAs, partly because they are associated with the government and partly because they are sometimes corrupt. It is extremely difficult to get farmers to discuss their mistrust of government officials when only being present in a site for a week. However, it was fairly evident that this dynamic

existed. In Diga, several interviews were conducted near a kebele chairmans office, but out of earshot. When a group of men came up and started listening to what was being said, the young farmer who was being interviewed immediately changed what he was saying. Furthermore, a member of our field team said that the political division within Diga is stark, with members of the opposition being jailed near election times, and laws being passed to outlaw speaking against the government. Regarding the corruption aspect, in a kebele in Fogera, a woman who lived on her own, with her mother and sister in a house nearby, said that she did not even know the names of the DAs and had certainly never seen or spoken to them. When she and her mother attempted to go buy fertilizer at the agricultural bureau, the officials there refused to sell it to them. Instead, they sell the fertilizer to their friends and family members, who mark up the price and sell it in the market. In another instance, a farmer accused politicians between Addis and here, meaning mid-level bureaucrats, of coming to his community when their clothes or shoes were worn-out. They had farmers apply for loans that were never distributed. Clearly this mistrust stemming from corruption and political affiliation affects whether farmers are likely to adopt the technologies that DAs and other government officials promote. It also affects to whom the DAs promote these technologies.

Formal Education
Overwhelmingly, farmers explain adoption and non-adoption by levels of education. When asked why they decided to adopt something or how they know about a technology, the answer is often, I/he/she have been educated through grade 9/10/11/12. The data shows that there are plenty of people who have not been educated that adopt technologies, so this explanation is clearly over-simplified, but it does seem to have some bearing. In schools, children are being taught about farming technology as part of geography class. They discuss such topics as crop rotation, improved varieties, inorganic fertilizer, livestock, and compost. One boy who had just completed grade ten also explained that they have, interestingly, discussed how long it takes fruit trees to produce fruit, how to grow high-value vegetables around the roots of fruit trees, how to correctly use male and female varieties of papaya trees, how to prevent climate change by planting trees, and using river diversion and constructing dams because it is foolish to only rely on rain. The only ones of the eight technologies they do not discuss in school are ponds and area enclosure (wells are discussed in another class since they are for the house not for farming), which are interestingly the least well known of the eight technologies. Through schooling, one would expect that adults who are not reached by extension agents might alternatively be reached through their children that they are able to send to school. However, our grade ten student also elucidated why this information may not be making it up to older generations. He said that though they are encouraged by their teachers to tell their parents what they learn, it is not culturally acceptable for a son to teach his father. Thus the information flow does not happen. Furthermore, though these children say that they will adopt these technologies, students who have made it this far in school routinely report that they do not want to be farmers, but instead would prefer to have a government job. Often, students drop out of school because it is too far away, meaning that

households who are far from the road are less likely to receive information from extension agents and less likely to receive information through formal education.

Credit Agencies
There are several strategies or complementary inputs that were mentioned above as requiring an initial capital investment that prohibits farmers from adopting them. Wells often require an input of cash to hire someone to dig. Ponds require cash to buy plastic sheeting or concrete, and in certain cases a pump. Multipurpose trees and orchards less often require cash to purchase seedlings, though this sum is not usually very high. Gully rehabilitation may require cash to pay a laborer. Area enclosure may require cash for purchasing grass or timber for a fence. In all of these cases, adopting this strategy would result in a higher income for the farmers that would well cover the initial costs, plus some. For example, one farmer told us that he is currently earning 150 birr per tree from his mango trees. With fertilizer, he could earn 500 birr per tree, and the fertilizer would cost 16-18 birr. However, we do not see any cases of farmers taking out loans to cover inputs, including the farmer mentioned here. Why is this? The primary reason is that most farmers state that they are not interested in credit because it comes with an interest rate. For some, the interest rate is too high, and they would borrow if it was lower, but for others any interest rate is too high. Since Islam forbids charging interest, the two Muslim farmers interviewed both said that they are not interested in loans; however, it is unclear to what extent this restriction is observed, as one of them also said that he had signed for a loan that he never received from the woreda. Another reason that people do not use credit services is that the poorest of the poor cannot qualify. At most agencies, an applicant must have assets these can be tin roof houses, cattle, and in some cases mango tress and even land (though it is unclear how these assets would be repossessed in the case of non-repayment). Extremely poor members of communities do not own such assets. Lastly, at some credit agencies loans are only given out for very specific purposes. For example, in Garuma kebele in Diga, the farmers believed that loans were only available for beehives, animal fattening, and hens, all of which had restrictions, usually in the form of building some form of housing before qualifying. This is not true in all cases elsewhere farmers stated that loans were available for any type of enterprise, but that they had to have a plan on what they would use the money for.

Social Structures
Gender
Technology adoption is structured very differently in male-headed households than in female-headed households, not only because the DAs target men. As briefly mentioned above in the discussion of area enclosure, female-headed households are often more inclined to adopt the eight rainwater management strategies, especially when they are younger and have children in the household who can provide labor. On average, male-headed households have adopted 1.8 out of the possible 7 rainwater management strategies (with terraces excluded). Female-headed households have only adopted 1.6, but when you look at only female-headed households where the head of the household is

under the age of 60, which creates an age structure that more closely resembles maleheaded households, this number increases to 1.9. This may be because women are more focused on the food security of the household rather than turning a profit, and so will adopt technologies that will help this towards this goal. As one woman described, women are more aware of how much food is in the household because they prepare it everyday. A man may see how much food they have at the time of harvest, but they do not see the stock dwindling everyday. Since none of the eight rainwater management technologies are perceived as particularly risky in terms of food security (unlike, for example, improved varieties of seeds), they are likely to adopt strategies if they are properly trained and have the labor and cash required to implement. However, a major caveat to this generalization is their ability to make decisions about the management of their farm. Because it is culturally unacceptable for women to plow, often their decision-making ability is restricted by who plows their land. There are four types of plowing situations explored below, from most ideal to least. Each individual situation varies in terms of who provides seeds, fertilizer, oxen, and labor, but the four situations generalized below give an idea as to how much decision-making authority a female head of household has. What is generally most favorable for female-headed households is to have a male relative, usually a brother, older son, or uncle, plow for them without having to give them a share of the production. This is usually only done for a short period of time, generally right after the death of a husband or a divorce. Eventually the male relative will demand his share of the production and may want some authority in deciding how to manage the farm. A second-best alternative for the household is paying a laborer to plow or for other labor as needed. This is generally cheaper in the long term than is the traditional form of sharecropping, and the head of the household retains all decision-making authority. A next alternative is the traditional form of sharecropping in which the landowner and sharecropper come to an agreement before any work begins about how the land will be managed, and they split the production 50/50. This type of arrangement varies from case to case, but in general the landowner retains decision-making authority. In the worst case, a man from outside the household controls decision-making and does so to benefit himself, not the family. This man can be an ex-husband or a husbands brother in the case of widows. These men force the women to sharecrop with them, and threaten any other farmers who may make an offer to the head of the household. Often they give them less than the 50% of the production. The sharecropping men are less likely to adopt technologies that are labor or capital intensive and that would benefit the female landowner because they would rather do so on their own land. Women in these situations are frequently scared of the repercussions of disagreeing about land management, especially in Fogera where there are few mechanisms for conflict resolution (explained below). In several cases, the men were not ex-husbands or husbands brothers, but sharecroppers who prey on the most marginalized members of society. One very old woman who was confused about what year it was, was told by her sharecropper that because she could not contribute fertilizer and seeds and because her land was fairly degraded that she would only get 26kg of the production for each timad (roughly 1/4

hectare). Another woman who had lost an eye and whose husband threw her out only received 1/3 of the production because her land is far away, and the sharecropper claims that since he has to walk so far that he should get more of the production. Two caveats must be mentioned here that break the rule of women being more likely to adopt technologies. First, for households that are headed by an older woman, the inclination to adopt technologies is drastically lessened. Plowing is mentioned as the only type of labor that is simply not possible for women to do. However, older women frequently stated that they simply were not capable of providing the labor for adopting these technologies, or even sometimes of understanding them. Second, female-headed households are often less inclined to adopt wells and ponds because they fear that cattle or children will fall in and drown. This was not something that was ever mentioned by any of the male farmers as risky.

Conflict
The Fogera field site in Amhara Region seemed to experience a higher degree of conflict among community members than the other two sites, which affects technology adoption in interesting ways. In Fogera, farmers explained that there is a kind of backlash against farmers who do very well for themselves from working hard. The backlash comes in the form of killing cattle, stealing, and general demoralizing. If you work very hard and earn 80,000 birr and then someone steals it, the next time you will not work as hard, he explained. Thus, if a farmer adopts a technology that increases his production and income, he may be under threat from his neighbors. This phenomenon is similar to what Harry West describes in Kupilikula: Governance and the Invisible Realm in Mozambique. This could perhaps be explained by a lack of a functioning conflict resolution mechanism among the Amhara people. In the Oromo sites, conflict occasionally surfaced in the interviews, but it was always accompanied by a conflict resolution system that involved elders and the state. Though rulings are not always enforced, there is at least a semi-judicious process through which people are able to deal with problems. For example, a female farmer spoke of a conflict that she had with her brothers husband after her husbands death. This man insisted that he be allowed to control her land. When she refused, he threatened to kill her, and she fled to her brothers home. She went to court and because she clearly had a certificate and the legal rights to her land, the court ruled in her favor. She says that the ruling has not been enforced, but she at least had access to a resolution mechanism. Another farmer in Jeldu indicated that there was a system in which elders resolved conflicts when people built fences and tried to encroach on common land. In Fogera, by contrast, all except for the most well connected reported that there were no mechanisms for conflict resolution, and people resolved conflict themselves, with this often leading to murder. There are several instances of conflict arising when a person had sold their land (before this was illegal) in a cash shortage but then wanted it back. Families carry these grudges for generations. The mechanism in Fogera for conflict resolution is to inform the kebele chairman, but most people see these chairmen as corrupt officials who can be bribed, and they perceive that only the friends and family members of the chairman will receive favorable judgments from him. The most marginalized members of the society, usually poor single women, were not even aware

that this mechanism existed.

Land Tenure
Sharecropping
All land in Ethiopia is owned by the Ethiopian state. Farmers thus got their land in one of two ways the government distributed the land to them or they inherited it from their parents. Most government land distribution was done under the Derg and right after the Derg fell. Every kebele in which we worked was no longer distributing land because they had run out, with the most recent having stopped this practice seven years ago. When combined with the massive population growth rate, there are more and more people who have no land or who do not have enough land to subsist. These people sharecrop, or provide labor in exchange for 50% of the production. The exact sharecropping arrangements matter much to adoption of these rainwater management strategies. Landowners choose to sharecrop their land out for a number of reasons. Unmarried women sharecrop because they cannot plow. Landowners with more land than they can farm themselves sharecrop, as do people who live far away from the land that they own or are employed outside of farming, usually in government jobs. There is a high degree of competition among people who want to be given land to sharecrop. Landowners are in a position of power and generally select their sharecropper based on their strength as a farmer. When delving more specifically, this means their ability to work hard, do things on time, and produce high yields. Often landowners sharecrop to their relatives, but they are generally not hesitant to replace them with another sharecropper if they are not doing well. One would expect that a sharecropper who is able to use these rainwater management strategies would be in a better bargaining position than those who do not. However, in many cases people are scared that suggesting this to a landowner will insult or offend them. Thus, if any strategies are used on sharecropped land, it is the landowner who suggests them. This is usually agreed upon before the plowing season starts, whether in a written contract or not. Trees, both multipurpose and fruit are in many cases planted on land that is sharecropped. They are often planted in areas that cannot be used for crop production because they cannot be plowed, or they are planted to create borders. In all cases, however, the landowner is the one who provides the labor for producing these trees, and the landowner receives all the benefits. Landless people who sharecrop thus do not have access to land for growing trees, unless they do so on the land where their house is located. This type of situation must be discussed with the person who owns the land, who is usually a relative, and it is relatively uncommon. Having land that is closer to the river is an asset for a landowner and may mean that they can attract a better sharecropper because they can produce high-value vegetables. In all of the instances in which river diversion was adopted on sharecropped land, both the landowner and the sharecropper contributed labor because they both owned land that benefited from the diversion, meaning that the sharecropper was a neighbor and also a landowner.

Land Seizure
It would seem that, if farmers perceived the threat that their land would be taken away, they would be less likely to adopt the strategies that take a longer time to produce an output or require a large capital investment. Since there is a collective memory of the Derg taking land and redistributing it, this would ostensibly seem to be a credible threat. However, most farmers stated that they do not see this as a credible threat and do not believe that the current government will take their land. There were only two instances of land being taken. In one, a farmer who had migrated from a different woreda and did not have very many social ties had all of his land taken by the government because he did not plow it one year due to a lack of oxen and did not pay his taxes. In the other, a farmer had much of his land taken because of his affiliation with the Derg regime. All of the other farmers reported that they had never heard of land being taken and that this did not happen in their communities. The government began certifying peoples land seven years ago and providing them with an official certificate. Farmers on the whole did not say that this made any difference to how they managed their farm because they never perceived a threat to their land in the first place. The certificates have, however, made conflicts about encroaching on land easier to resolve since the boundaries are more clearly defined, and they have made paying land taxes a more transparent process.

IV. Discussion
This research is intended to inform the process of designing interventions in the field sites where the NBDC is working. As such, the following section offers thoughts on considerations to be made when planning an intervention. An intervention that regulates the upstream-downstream effects of river diversion and expanded access to this strategy would have a large impact on livelihoods. However, in most of the sites there are complex local regulations of who can use the river and at what times. This research was not extensive enough to be able to document all of these regulations, but any intervention targeting river diversion would have to take these regulations into account. Regarding power dynamics, it would seem that working with DAs would be a good entry point into a community. For all the reasons already discussed, however, DAs are seen as political, often corrupt figures and thus the NBDC might not want to affiliate themselves with them, particularly if they are trying to reach marginalized members of communities. In most kebeles, it would be next to impossible to completely ignore DAs, as government training is one of the largest determinants of technology adoption in the Highlands. Working in kebeles where the DA presence is weak could be the most effective because it would reduce the tension that may arise from competing sources of information. Land tenure seems to be the primary determinant of power within the communities large landowners generally occupy a better position in society, with better access to government training and thus better access to information about technology. However, it is important to note that land tenure is not the only determinant of power relations. Unmarried female landholders may occupy a lower position because of their gender than a male counterpart would. As another entry point into communities, the issue of fertilizer is extremely

important to farmers, with most of them reporting that the cost of inorganic fertilizer was the primary obstacle to production. Many farmers received training on and adopted compost as an alternative, only to report that it made them sick, and abandoned the technology. An intervention that helped to address this inorganic fertilizer / compost problem would likely be well received. Though not a rainwater management strategy, this type of intervention could provide a complement to others that are more focused on rainwater management, since, as Yesuf and Kohlin have pointed out, yield-enhancing technologies can often complement others and increase the likelihood that the technology is not abandoned. Fertilizer may also be related to the misperceptions that exist among farmers. For example, farmers perceive that they cannot plant fruit trees at their elevation or that their soil is too sandy for ponds. These may not really be misperceptions, but rather a result of farmers trying to emphasize what is more important to them that being inorganic fertilizer, since they perceive that fertilizer will have a larger impact on their livelihoods than will these rainwater management strategies. Future research may explore the historical reasons why these perceptions exist, and the historical trajectory that fertilizer adoption has taken to result in being deemed a necessity by farmers. There appears to be a disconnect and some misinformation between what farmers observe and how they relate it to the policies promoted by the government. This is most clearly seen in the issue of climate change. Farmers have witnessed changing rainfall patterns for several years and have experienced drought and flooding. They now attribute these weather patterns to climate change because this is what they have been told by government officials, in schools, and by their neighbors. By joining the ideas of climate change with these rainwater management strategies, farmers may get the wrong idea that by using these strategies planting trees, for example they will be able to reestablish normal rainfall patterns in the very near future. While it is important to leverage the ideas that currently exist in the community, it is also important not to create false expectations that make farmers less likely to adopt future technologies. Lastly, the data suggests that targeting an intervention at female-headed households may have a greater success rate than one that targets the whole population, especially female-headed households that have children to assist with labor. Targeting female-headed households may also have a greater impact on food security since this is generally a more primary concern for women than men.

V. Conclusion
This paper used qualitative in-depth interviews to explore the social, political, and economic context in which technology adoption takes place in three sites in the Ethiopian Highlands. The study has several policy implications, the first being that extension agents need to be disassociated from the political arena as much as possible. Offering higher wages and more incentives to reach the poorest members of communities could be one way to address this issue. Second, mechanisms of conflict management are extremely important to technology adoption and need to be improved people will not try to improve their livelihoods if doing so will result in their ostracism or even harm. Lastly, the overarching theme of this research suggests that policies that ignore the settings in which they are intervening are destined for failure these communities exhibit complex ways of managing land and interacting with one another that must be understood and

taken into account in any policy or intervention.

References Gessesse, G., A. Klik, and H. Hurni. 2009. Assessment of Soil Erosion and Soil Conservation Practices in Angereb Watershed, Ethiopia: Technological and Land User Context. Conference on International Research on Food Security, Natural Resource Management and Rural Development, University of Hamburg. Kassie, M., M. Yesuf, and Gunnar Kohlin. 2009. The Role of Production Risk in Sustainable Land-Management Technology Adoption in the Ethiopian Highlands. Working Paper, no. 407. Goteborg: University of Gothenburg, School of Business, Economics, and Law, Department of Economics. Kohlin, G., and M. Yesuf. 2009. Market Imperfections and Farm Technology Adoption Decisions A Case Study from the Highlands of Ethiopia. Working Paper, no. 406. Goteborg: University of Gothenburg, School of Business, Economics, and Law, Department of Economics.